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Build thread - M122 roots supercharger

After about 15 track days, my 280,000 mile M3 has suffered a head gasket failure, and after inspecting the head and block in my shop, I have learned the following:

1. The cylinder bores have around 0.01mm of wear at the points of maximum wear, near the top of the bore, at the sides where the rocking of the piston is greatest. This is 10% of the allowable 0.1mm maximum wear.

2. After cleaning, the piston tops are fairly pristine and the block surface is flat. The cross hatching is still prominent on the cylinder walls. With zero oil consumption, no evidence of coolant in the oil, fresh motor mounts and no clutch issues, I see no compelling reason to remove the block from the car.

3. The head chambers, valves and exhaust ports have heavy carbon deposits that can only be removed by abrasive action. The exhaust valve seats are pitted and would require a valve job, the valve stems show at least 50% of maximum wear, and the head surface is warped enough to require milling rather than just refinishing. I have opted for exchanging the head for a freshly rebuilt one from my local head rebuilder.

4. The camshaft lobes are fine, but the journals and tray caps have some fairly significant scoring. I will probably polish these up and run them for now due to the crazy market for used S52 cams.

I have a plan and some definite goals, but for now I will just leave this here:

That may have been TL;DR. I am attempting to install a supercharger sourced from a Ford Shelby GT500. I'll try to keep it more concise.

I just finished putting in a slim Derale two speed pusher fan in place of the stock aux fan, I cut out the support in between the two bumper shocks to maximize room for the intercooler, which will be a 24x9x3 Cx Racing from eBay.

That may have been TL;DR. I am attempting to install a supercharger sourced from a Ford Shelby GT500. I'll try to keep it more concise.

I just finished putting in a slim Derale two speed pusher fan in place of the stock aux fan, I cut out the support in between the two bumper shocks to maximize room for the intercooler, which will be a 24x9x3 Cx Racing from eBay.

Interested to see how this goes! are you using the Hyde Motor Works adapter?

Yes, I found a supercharger on eBay with 9,000 miles on it (hopefully the seller is honest), and then ordered the kit from Hyde. He said their backlog is about four weeks, so I should have plenty of time to get my cylinder head installed and all the prep work done in the meantime.

I'm going with a Deatschwerks DW300 fuel pump, just in case I decide to turn the boost up later. It will start out at 8-9 psi with the bypass valve that comes with the kit.

The BMW specific installation kit from Deatschwerks is a bit disappointing. The pump case is smaller in diameter than the OEM pump, and no solution to secure the pump in the stock pump carrier is provided with the install kit. 0420191635_HDR.jpg

Fortunately, I had a piece of 1.75" inch steel pipe with a 1.55" ID laying around the shop that is a perfect fit on the DW pump. I cut a ring out of the pipe and used it to secure the new pump in the carrier with a hose clamp. I left the burr on the inside of the ring to bite into the pump housing and lock it in place.

I tapped the pins out of the connector for power to the pump and the wires for the DW pump were a nice snug fit. It will get a dedicated power feed from my main disconnect switch through a secondary relay controlled by the original fuel pump wiring.

I cleaned up my block with a big flat aluminum plate and some adhesive 220 grit silicon carbide sandpaper, then finished up with 400 grit. All the oil and water passages and the bores were plugged with grease and paper towels. I lost one chunk of towel down in the water jacket while trying to pry it out, but then fished it out with a small pick.

This is awesome- I hadn't heard of Hyde Motor Works before..... And now, I'm seriously considering one, since I'd be all in to the build including tune + clutch around 5.5-6 thousand dollars, assuming I got the supercharger through them. That's less expensive than the turbo build I've been thinking about doing after this season, with what seems to be less complication in the build. The Eaton m122h will flow all the air I ever need, even if I built the motor up. I'd really only be blanning on doing a cutring+studs, and running reliably at 350-400. Maybe twin screw is the way..........

Thank you for posting, and I'm looking forward to seeing how your build comes together!

This is awesome- I hadn't heard of Hyde Motor Works before..... And now, I'm seriously considering one, since I'd be all in to the build including tune + clutch around 5.5-6 thousand dollars, assuming I got the supercharger through them. That's less expensive than the turbo build I've been thinking about doing after this season, with what seems to be less complication in the build. The Eaton m122h will flow all the air I ever need, even if I built the motor up. I'd really only be blanning on doing a cutring+studs, and running reliably at 350-400. Maybe twin screw is the way..........

Thank you for posting, and I'm looking forward to seeing how your build comes together!

Yep, it looks like it will be 1500-2000 cheaper than a quality turbo setup. I have the E34 M5 clutch from UUC, not sure if it's going to last long at 8-9 psi. I'm doing my own tune with RomRaider, so that helps a lot on the cost. Hyde was very helpful in providing the flashing software and the tune they developed for their M50B30 stroker car.

Strangely, the outer tube of the double wall sections of the exhaust is magnetic stainless steel, whereas the single wall sections are made of non-magnetic stainless steel. No idea why, just had to grab a pick instead of a magnet to retrieve the plugs I cut out with my hole saw.

I got the Koyo E36 radiator also. Looks like a quality piece, all the mounts fit as they should.

I received my rebuilt head today. The height of the head is 5.509", so they milled off 0.003". This means my compression may be closer to 9.1:1 than 9:0:1 with the cutring gasket and spacer. It's very clean, has aftermarket valves and a nice finish on it.

I think I can see a crack that was welded between the oil and water passages next to cylinder 6 - there's some discoloration and a faint line visible. The shop has a good reputation, hopefully this head is up to the pressure I'll be putting on it.0423191919.jpg

I got my Chinese intercooler kit, I thought I ordered a 24X9 core, but it's actually 12 inches high. I think I'll just stuff it up there further behind the kidney grills. Looks like no problem clearing the brake ducts, but mounting it is going to be more challenging now. 0423191924.jpg

Any specific reason you didn't go for their full kit? I'm thinking about seeing if I can source my own supercharger, and just get the full kit from them. If they can source a $550-600 supercharger, I'm not sure I can find a better price.

Are you experienced in tuning? I'd hate to blow my own car up with some shoddy tuning, which is why I'm tempted to have a reputable shop tune it. (I'm near to RK, so I'd probably trailer the car out there and have them do it, unless I do some research and find another competent tuner closer than that)

I'm also curious what kind of driving you plan on doing with this build. Just normal track days, a la 20 min sessions of beating on the car, at decent speeds? I have no experience with superchargers, and my car's a drift car, so I need to look into potential issues that may arise from this. I'm not even sure what to investigate at this point.

Any specific reason you didn't go for their full kit? I'm thinking about seeing if I can source my own supercharger, and just get the full kit from them. If they can source a $550-600 supercharger, I'm not sure I can find a better price.

Are you experienced in tuning? I'd hate to blow my own car up with some shoddy tuning, which is why I'm tempted to have a reputable shop tune it. (I'm near to RK, so I'd probably trailer the car out there and have them do it, unless I do some research and find another competent tuner closer than that)

I'm also curious what kind of driving you plan on doing with this build. Just normal track days, a la 20 min sessions of beating on the car, at decent speeds? I have no experience with superchargers, and my car's a drift car, so I need to look into potential issues that may arise from this. I'm not even sure what to investigate at this point.

Good questions...

I got lucky and found a 9,000 mile supercharger for $625. Hyde's intercooler kit looks like an off-the-shelf universal kit from China, just like what I got (although they do modify the inlet/outlet to make it fit better). There's some risk of shipping damage on these heavy parts coming from New Zealand. I ended up beating his price for the balance of the full kit vs the base kit. I'm sure he packs everything very well, he sent me pictures of his shipping boxes and such.

Yes, my last project was a custom blower setup on my 94 Impreza rallycross car, I did all fabrication and tuning by piggyback/RRFPR. It made about 8 psi on an EJ25D, but the M62 blower doesn't like to spin that fast, and I went through a few of them. Too bad an M90 won't fit without a silly hood penetration.

There isn't really anything special about tuning an S52 vs other early EFI cars other than Vanos, that adds one more step. I've had the car for 10 years, waiting for someone to put in the work to map out the ECU table definitions and make the info open source. Thanks to mrf582 and all the RomRaider folks! If you have a tuner with a dyno, that removes a lot of your risk, especially if you have local cops on the lookout for people doing WOT pulls up the on-ramps and then slowing back down from 90something before merging, lol.

My M3 was my first track day car, and I will probably do a few more track days with it - that's why I'm beefing up the cooling system as much as possible. Roots blowers make a lot of heat, you can find pictures of Mustangs with melted paint on the hood from turning up the boost. Fortunately, we don't have to spin it as fast to make boost our 6-cylinders, and that increases the efficiency (and reduces the heat produced) by about 10%.

With drifting, your intercooler isn't going to be as effective, but you wouldn't be WOT for 20-30 seconds at a stretch, either. There is the option of water/methanol injection if you go this route. You can inject before the blower and get a lot of cooling and more power that way.

I may end up drifting as well... E36 racing isn't as big as E30 and E46, HPDEs get boring eventually.

I bought a set of 8 60 lb injectors from an eBay seller. The flow test report shows pretty good results, but the injectors are not marked in any way, so I don't know which injector corresponds to each test. Would have been nice to select the lowest flowing two to exclude from the set I'm going to use. They're all +/- 1% though. 0427191256.jpg

The cutring gasket install was a bit tricky with the block in the car. I followed the instructions in the 2012 thread by CES. The copper spacer fits snugly on the alignment dowels, but the gasket has 1-2mm of play to move around on top of the spacer.0427191344.jpg0427191352.jpg

It looked like I was going to rupture a disc trying to manhandle the head onto the block, so I cheated with my shop crane.

This worked pretty well, allowed me to slowly lower the head and confirm that the rings had not shifted. The first attempt failed because I tried to fish the timing chain up through the head and jostled the gasket, popping the rings out of place. Second try went much better and the head is now torqued into place on step two of the torque sequence for the ARP studs, waiting overnight for the gasket to finish compressing and then I'll put the final 85 ft lbs on them tomorrow.

The sound of the Corsa is notoriously rowdy for a street car, and it's going to 11 with a supercharger installed. I hope the tricked out Ford Explorers that the local police roll around in have good sound deadening. I don't have any neighbors within 400 feet, there's no emissions testing here, and this is definitely not my daily driver.

Would you recommend just pulling the motor to do the cutrings? Or if I'm careful, is it perfectly possible with an extra positioning hand? I suppose it'll be an excuse to get an engine hoist, as I'll probably need one eventually.

Would you recommend just pulling the motor to do the cutrings? Or if I'm careful, is it perfectly possible with an extra positioning hand? I suppose it'll be an excuse to get an engine hoist, as I'll probably need one eventually.

It is certainly easier. I and many others have done it with the engine in the car though, so it is possible. I used a shop crane with the head to lower it very carefully like it looks OP did.

I have heard of people super gluing the rings in place as well, however I did not go that route.

It's the 87mm cutring gasket for the S52, thickness is .07, and the spacer adds .07. Some people have jacked the passenger side of the car up as much as possible to tilt the engine towards vertical. If you have one person on an engine crane and one person maneuvering the head, it should go pretty smoothly.